Vehicles operating in an autonomous mode (e.g., driverless) can relieve occupants, especially the driver, from some driving-related responsibilities. When operating in an autonomous mode, the vehicle can navigate to various locations using onboard sensors, allowing the vehicle to travel with minimal human interaction or in some cases without any passengers.
Motion planning and control are critical operations in autonomous driving. To human drivers, planning and control of a vehicle is a subjective decision-making process. Two different human drivers, faced with identical driving situations, are likely to make different planning and control decisions for the driving situation. Autonomous vehicle driving decisions are objective and should produce the same driving decision under the same driving situations. An evaluation framework is needed to account for differences between objective autonomous vehicle driving decisions and subjective human decisions, for the same driving situation.